Understanding ABS Gear and Equipment Specifications*
John Erickson Neil Gascoigne William Hanisch September 23, 2022
Proper gear is vital to acheive excellence in any endeavor and striking a golf ball is no exception. This document describes how to set up your equipment the Advanced Ball Striking way.
1 Proper Gear
There are several aspects to properly set up your equipement. These are:
Stiff Shafts Firm shafts will give you the best ball control.
Flat Lie Angles The flatter the lie angle the straighter you will hit the ball.
Heavy Gear This will compress the ball better and increases feel.
Sweetspot Weighting The weight should be behind the sweetspot, not around it.
No Offset Irons with offset discourages a pivot-driven motion. The following subsections describe these aspects in detail.
1.1 Stiff Shafts
Ben Hogan hated feeling the shaft bending when he swung a golf club and so do we. Firm shafts will give the best possible ball control and the most accurate vibration coming up the shaft into your hands for hitting repeatable golf shots. Stiff shafts are also better for chipping as they will respond more reliably particularly with chips from the rough. All hitters are capable of playing stiff shafts (hitters).
*Copyright © 2022 Advanced Ball Striking.
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1.2 Flat Lie Angles
Flat lie angles inhibit pulled shots and hooking the ball, allowing a player to release hard into impact without fearing left. The flatter the lie angle, the more the left vector of possibility moves toward the target, not away from it. Flat lie angles also encourage the pivot to get busy by their very nature, they put the club more behind your body than up above the shoulders allowing you to get aggressive with the pivot rotation also. Shallower entry cleans up the strikes so you win on three fronts. There is nothing worse that hitting the ball long and left of a green. Even downhill left to right putts are considerably more difficult that putting up the hill from below the hole and right of the pin on most golf greens. Put position in your favor, eliminate the left side of the golf course, and allow yourself to strike the ball aggressively like the great master ball strikers did using flat lie angles.
1.3 Heavy Gear
Swinging heavier gear wins the battle with the ball (compression) and puts more feel into your hands (a player’s lifeblood). Heavier gear also requires firmer shafts as stated above. Hogan, Moe Norman, George Knudson, Sam Snead and many other great strikers played very heavy gear. Let your body adapt to heavier gear. You will get stronger over time, and heavier gear will help you embrace the core pivot muscles that you need to train to properly strike a golf ball. You won’t need to beat balls as much to find your feel. It will be there when you pull a heavier club from your bag. ABS gear is progressively dead weighted and swing weighted. Dead weight progression is much more vital than that head to grip swing weighting balance point. Focus on over all club dead weights not swing weights.
1.4 Sweetspot Weighting
You want the weight of the club behind the sweetspot where you hit it, not out on the perimeter where you don’t want to hit it. Cavity backs and perimeter weighted gear will slow your progress, and their design, by their very nature, are based upon negative reinforcement. You want a club that looks back and you and says “you can do this” instead of a club that says “you can’t do this because you are a hacker”. Muscleback blades and persimmons will give your brain stellar reliable feedback shot after shot to speed up your improvement and make you a better player. Rise to the occasion and be the best you can be. You can do it!
1.5 No Offset
You do not want offset on your irons. Offset forces you to over rotate either your hands, shoulders or both which can cause OTT or other negative swing side effects creating unnecessary compensations. A properly struck shot hits
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the ball on the 3rd groove, and you want to feel your impact right down the shaft center. A slight leading edge forward progression into the shorter irons will put the ball right where it needs to be. Reward yourself with the proper active forearm rotation through the strike zone with a flush hit, not having to over rotate or come down too steep a plane to compensate for offset. We remove all offset from approved ABS gear.
2 Specifications
Setting up your gear properly is vital to playing good golf. Here’s how to do it the ABS way.
2.1 Woods
The following table shows the ABS specifications for wood clubs. Shafts on all woods are X flex.
Wood
Driver 2 3 4
2.2 Irons
Length (in) 43.5–44.0
43.5–44.0 42.7–43.2 42.0–42.5
Weight (oz) 14.0–15.0
13.8–14.8 13.6–14.6 13.4–14.4
Loft 8◦ –10◦
11◦ –13◦ 13◦ –15◦ 15◦ –17◦
Lie 48◦ –50◦
49◦ –51◦ 50◦ –52◦ 51◦ –53◦
The following table shows the ABS specifications for iron clubs. Shafts on all irons are X flex. Note that sand wedges are purposely set up with upright lie angles to accomodate openning the club face.
Iron Length (in)
- 1 40.0–40.5
- 2 39.0–39.5
- 3 38.5–39.0
- 4 38.0–38.5
- 5 37.5–38.0
- 6 37.0–37.5
- 7 36.5–37.0
- 8 36.0–36.5
- 9 35.5–36.0
PW 35.3–35.8 GW 35.3–35.8 SW 35.3–35.8
Weight (oz) 14.8–15.5
15.0–15.7 15.2–15.9 15.4–16.1 15.6–16.3 15.8–16.5 16.0–16.7 16.2–16.9 16.4–17.1 17.0–17.7 17.5–18.2 18.0–18.7
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Loft Lie 13◦ 52◦ –54◦
16◦ 52◦ –54◦ 20◦ 53◦ –55◦ 24◦ 54◦ –56◦ 28◦ 55◦ –57◦ 32◦ 56◦ –58◦ 36◦ 56◦ –58◦ 40◦ 57◦ –59◦ 44◦ 57◦ –59◦ 48◦ 58◦ –60◦ 52◦ 58◦ –60◦ 56◦ 66◦ –68◦
3 Retro-Fitting
A typical retro fitted set of irons would typically go through the following tedious steps to get the club up to proper playable specs. Once we have located a worthy set to restore and upgrade we do some or all of the following.
- Removing old shafts requires removing the pins. They must be either hammered out, drilled out. The necks are heated to break the epoxy bond, and if the shafts don’t come out sometimes they old shaft must be cut and drilled out by hand.
- Prepping the new hosels requires cleaning out the neck, and grinding the new tip so it holds the epoxy. Most new shafts are also cut or tipped an inch or so, and all the new shafts are carefully matched up with 1/2 inch progressive step patterns. To get some shafts the correct length, sometimes 1 inch to 1/2 inch extenders must be epoxied into the grip end. Most new shafts are also re pinned which is another tedious process.
- New ferrules are put on each new shaft to dress up the necks. We use classic time period looking ferrules to dress them up. They are machine tooled and smoothed out for a like new showy look.
- New shafts need new grips. We use vintage cord grips when we can get or find them that have been unused, or we use classic green or black victory grips or mint grips or newer tour cord.
- Each club is then bent in a loft and lie machine to spec.
- Removing offset is a tedious process of making multiple bends on the neck to reshape the “sweetspot to shaft line” working toward moving the third groove right into mid shaft visual as best we can.
- Heads are machine polished, new paint put into head markings, and var- ious face restorations are done including such things as new face plating (such as copper coated faces and ceramic blacks) and often grooves are lightly re scored.
- Proper head weighting is done on the machine either by adding lead tape if needed or shafts are slightly weighted with lead or tungsten powder if lead tape can be avoided.
- We personally hit each club to make sure it feels right and is properly put together.
Remember, for a set including 2 - SW this entire process is repeated 10 times. It is very labor intensive and we will do our best to keep costs affordable. However, you can be rest assured you have a pro caliber proper set of golf clubs in your bag that will last you a lifetime.